As Lauren sat alone in a coffee house, she clutched her hands together to stop them from shaking. Despite her efforts to concentrate on her work, the images of Scott"s ravaged body clawed at her mind incessantly. After trying to swallow a piece of muffin, she spit it back out into a napkin. Lauren then looked out onto Second Street, thinking back on the forces which had conspired to bring her to this moment in her life.
As a young girl, every profession she ever considered was one full of adventure. When she was seven, she played “Peace Corps” and built a hut in her backyard in San Diego, equipping it with an aqueduct system of overturned Mexican roof tiles. Alone in her hut she would pretend she was in an exotic place where people ate with their fingers and listened to strange music.
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